Aspirations and Divagations: The Poetics of Place in Propertius 2.10

Recusatioas Political Theatre: Horace's Letter to Augustus

“…29 What happens to an intertext when it is also a cultural reference, taking us outside the library, into the habits of the emperor's political theatre and the deeper structures of Roman thought? Valuable recent additions include Cameron 1995Tatum 2000;Bowditch 2001;Harbach 2010: 206-31;Barchiesi 2011. It is this pose of denial that itself constitutes the dominant feature of imperial ceremonial.'…”

“… 28 For a useful summary of the history of poetic refusals in Rome, with standard bibliography, see Lyne 1995: 31–9. Valuable recent additions include Cameron 1995: 454–83; Tatum 2000; Bowditch 2001; Harbach 2010: 206–31; Barchiesi 2011.…”

“… 69 cf. Tatum 2000: 397 on Propertius 2.10.19–20 ‘haec ego castra sequar’; ‘uates tua castra canendo / magnus ero’: ‘The plain of battle and the heights of Helicon are thus mapped onto one another, as a consequence of which there are two distinct vectors that define the motion toward epic in the world of Propertius 2.10.’…”

“…Ahl 1984: 58 points out that ‘there is a savage sting in this last remark, not only because Boeotians were proverbially stupid, but because Alexander had totally destroyed Boeotia's chief city, Thebes’. On the poetic valence of the landscape highs and lows of Helicon, see Tatum 2000 on the ‘failed ascent’ of Propertius 2.10 (‘nondum etiam Ascraeos norunt mea carmina fontes, / sed modo Permessi flumine lauit Amor,’ 25–6).…”